Nobody seems to know the origin of the nickname, a symbol of the cozy familiarity that customers had with the 128-year-old department store chain. But Montgomery Ward Inc. won't live to see its 129th birthday.

The company filed for bankruptcy Thursday and announced that every one of its 250 department stores across the United States will close in the next few months, including eight in Colorado.

Officials said slack sales and competition from other retailers forced a decision to pull the plug.

The chain was born in 1872 when Aaron Montgomery Ward founded the first drygoods mail-order catalog business. The store's colorful history included originating the "satisfaction guaranteed" phrase in 1875 and creation of "Rudolph the RedNosed Reindeer" by an advertising copywriter in 1939 as a promotional gimmick.

Bib overalls to lacy lingerie, oil changes to refrigerators - customers could find it
all at Wards. But being all things to all people is a failing strategy in modern retailing, analysts said.

News of the shutdown evoked fond remembrances from Wards loyalists, as well as nonchalance from Coloradans who viewed the store as a dinosaur - an all-toocommon perception for a retail chain that never found its market niche at the end of the 20th century.

The Denver flagship store at 555 S. Broadway enjoyed hordes of patrons from its opening on Feb. 2, 1929, surviving the horrific stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed. For decades more, it thrived, catering to shoppers and mail-order customers.

But the aging, eight-story, white brick building was abandoned in 1985, and its demolition in 1993 to make way for a new shopping center signaled the demise of Wards as a major Denver retailer.

Dick Bayles saw the end coming, as far back as 1976 when Montgomery Ward was acquired by Mobil Oil Corp.

"Mobil didn't know the difference between a brassiere and a tire," said the 85-year-old Bayles, who began work at the South Broadway store in 1933 after his graduation from South High School.

Bayles started as a janitor and finished 47 years later as inventory manager.

Like many Wards employees, he worked on roller skates to speed his movement through the cavernous, 900,000-squarefoot structure.

Along the way, he met a fellow worker named Rose in the complaints department. They've been married now for 64 years.

Bayles heard about the corporate shutdown Thursday on the radio. Even though he had anticipated the move for years, the news shocked him.

"I just about fell out of my chair," Bayles said.

"We still have people tell us every day that it was the greatest place in town to go and meet people and have some fun," he said. "I still go by the Broadway site, and I really miss it." Howard and Mary Goff of Denver were disappointed to hear the news, because they shop Wards for appliances and other home items.

The old catalog also holds fond memories for Howard Goff.

"I remember Wards being around since I was a kid," he said. "I would go through the catalog as a kid in the '60s, so they will definitely be missed."

Denver developer Jerry Glick recalls frequent trips with his father from their east Denver home to the South Broadway store.

"It was fascinating," he said. "It seems like they had one of everything. I remember buying our first TV there." Glick's perspective later changed when the abandoned building became a blight in what had once been called the "Miracle Mile" of Denver retailing.

Glick was on the board of the Denver Urban Renewal Authority in 1991 when the agency approved a developer's plan to demolish the structure in favor of the $45 million Broadway Marketplace.

"It became an eyesore," he said. "I was delighted to see it come down, and I think everybody else was, too." In Colorado and elsewhere, Wards was unable to adapt to a fast-changing retail environment, said retail analyst Christopher Burton of Denver's Laramie Co.

"They were never able to remake themselves into anything other than a five-and-dime depart ment store," he said.

"They were attempting to appeal to a middle-income group that already had shifted to newer discounters like Wal-Mart or Target. The last five or 10 years have not been good to them." Barbara Walton, a researcher at the Denver Public Library's Western History section, said Wards' shutdown is unlikely to generate the same burst of emotion that occurred when the Denver Dry Goods closed its last store in 1987.

"The Denver Dry was a local institution," she said. "Wards isn't a local chain. It's not quite the same." Walton said she never developed a strong affinity for the store, even though her father was a garden tractor supplier to Wards.

"I suppose if I saw something I really wanted, I would have shopped there," she said, "but I never did."

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